A collaboration of scientists from the United States and Senegal focused on doing just that by removing overgrown aquatic vegetation from areas upstream of the Diama Dam in northeastern Senegal. In doing so, they generated positive impacts to the local communities’ health and economies.

“It is rare and gratifying when we can find a potential win-win solution to both human health and livelihoods,” said UC Santa Barbara geography professor David López-Carr, a co-author of a paper that appears in the journal Nature. In it, the researchers provide proof for a hypothesis that agricultural activities, including the use of fertilizers, contribute to parasitic infections by fueling the growth of aquatic vegetation. “The results suggest a simple solution to positively impact society at the intersections of health, society and economy of northern Senegal, with implications for the over 700 million people globally in schistosomiasis endemic areas.”

Since the construction of the Diama Dam in 1986, local farmers have had better access to fresh water to irrigate their fields. However, the presence of the new infrastructure also has increased the prevalence of the schistosoma parasite, a tiny freshwater flatworm commonly found in Africa, South America and Southeast Asia. Nearly 250 million people around the world are estimated to be infected with this parasite.

As far as tropical diseases go, schistosomiasis (also known as bilharzia or snail fever) isn’t immediately fatal or even transmissible between people. But in the long term, the condition is debilitating.

“The disease is most prevalent in poor communities lacking potable water and adequate sanitation,” said López-Carr, an anthropogeographer who specializes in human-environment dynamics in the developing world. Adult worms take up residence in blood vessels and lay eggs in tissue, causing reactions and generally wreaking havoc on organs. Long-term effects include increased risk for cancer and infertility, and those infected are less able to work and go to school, keeping them in the cycle of poverty. “Poor farmers can lose up to half of their yields due to infection,” he said.

Health agencies and organizations have been fighting these infections with drugs that work well, however, the medicine does not prevent reinfection, which can happen as soon as the individual encounters contaminated water. Previous research has also focused on using the snails’ natural predators — prawns — which were cut off by the dam.

In their effort to get ahead of the disease, the collaboration took a close look at the habitat that supports the worms’ intermediate host, a small snail that lives in the Senegal River and its tributaries. They found that a common aquatic plant called Ceratophyllum demersum — also known as hornwort — can hold up to 99% of these snails, with which they have a mutualistic relationship.

Exacerbated by fertilizer runoff from agricultural operations farther upstream, c. demersum and other aquatic plants tend to proliferate in local waterways, which impedes access for daily activities such as cooking, irrigation and washing clothes.

For their experiment, the researchers conducted a three-year randomized control trial in 16 communities, to see if and how much nuisance vegetation removal in about half of the communities would affect the presence of the snails. They measured baseline infection rates, administered antiparasitic drugs, removed the vegetation and then measured reinfection rates in more than 1,400 schoolchildren. In total, the research teams took out an estimated 430 metric tons (wet) of aquatic vegetation from water access points.

“In our randomized controlled trial, control sites — places where we didn’t remove submerged vegetation from water access points — had 124% higher intestinal schistosoma reinfection rates,” López-Carr said. In addition to lowered infection rates where they removed the vegetation, the researchers found that the removed material could be used to feed livestock, or turned into compost for growing crops, lowering costs dramatically and increasing yields for local farmers. In this way, according to López-Carr “the approach yielded an economic incentive to remove nuisance vegetation from waterways and return nutrients from aquatic plants back to the soil and for livestock feed with the promise of severing poverty-disease traps while lowering infectious burden at the same time.”

“A broader benefit is the hope that this example can set for enhancing win-win planetary health research and solutions that improve livelihoods while also reducing infectious morbidity and mortality,” he added.

Having conducted these trials, the researchers hope that this study is implemented elsewhere in other similar regions to replicate the same kind of health and economic outcomes.

And, it might not be just a solution for developing countries. “Perhaps vegetation growth resulting from excess nutrients could also be used as livestock feed in more developed countries as well,” López-Carr said.

Despite the ubiquity of dairy-based foods, many people have some form of lactose intolerance — up to 36% of Americans, according to the National Institutes of Health. As a result, many turn to lactose-free, plant-based alternatives, some of which have added health benefits. For example, one drink under development combines rice flour and coconut water: Rice is hypoallergenic and high in fiber, and coconut water is hydrating and low in calories. To understand how heat treatment might alter this beverage, Jorge Yán?ez-Fernández, Diana Castro-Rodríguez and colleagues wanted to test the formulation against two different high-temperature processing steps.

The team used three versions of the beverage, containing either 2%, 5% or 8% rice flour, with coconut water comprising the rest. These were heated either by pasteurization in a water bath at 140 degrees Fahrenheit or by sterilization in an autoclave at almost 250 degrees Fahrenheit. After these treatments, the team found that the starches in the rice flour gelatinized and underwent the Maillard reaction, producing a slightly darkened color and stickier fluid for all three versions. Additionally, the drinks’ acidities increased, and there were fewer sugars, which may alter the way they taste. The team plans to use these results to inform future research into similar, dairy-free, “functional beverages,” including those that could one day contain probiotic, lactic-acid bacteria.

In nature, poisonous species typically advertise their toxicity, often by producing high contrast colours such as black, white and yellow, like wasps and bees.

Along similar lines, New Zealand’s cyanide-producing stonefly, Austroperla cyrene, produces strong ‘warning’ colours of black, white and yellow, to highlight its threat to potential predators.

In a new study published in Molecular Ecology, University of Otago Department of Zoology researchers reveal that an unrelated, non-toxic species ‘cheats’ by mimicking the appearance of this insect.

Lead author Dr Brodie Foster says by closely resembling a poisonous species, the Zelandoperla fenestrata stonefly hopes to avoid falling victim to predators.

“In the wild, birds will struggle to notice the difference between the poisonous and non-poisonous species, and so will likely avoid both.

“To the untrained eye, the poisonous species and its mimics are almost impossible to distinguish,” he says

The researchers used genomic approaches to reveal a key genetic mutation in a colouration gene which distinguishes cheats and non-cheats.

This genetic variation allows the cheating species to use different strategies in different regions.

However, co-author Dr Graham McCulloch says the strategy, known as Batesian mimicry, doesn’t always succeed.

“Our findings indicate that a ‘cheating’ strategy doesn’t pay in regions where the poisonous species is rare,” he says.

Co-author Professor Jon Waters adds cheating can be a dangerous game.

“If the cheats start to outnumber the poisonous species, then predators will wake up to this very quickly — it’s a bit of a balancing act,” he says.

The Marsden-funded team is assessing how environmental change is driving rapid evolutionary shifts in New Zealand’s native species.

Data collected by remote-sensing satellites is fundamental for many key activities, including aerial mapping, weather prediction, and monitoring deforestation. Currently, most satellites can only passively collect data, since they are not equipped to make decisions or detect changes. Instead, data has to be relayed to Earth to be processed, which typically takes several hours or even days. This limits the ability to identify and respond to rapidly emerging events, such as a natural disaster.

To overcome these restrictions, a group of researchers led by DPhil student Vít Růžička (Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford), took on the challenge of training the first machine learning program in outer space. During 2022, the team successfully pitched their idea to the Dashing through the Stars mission, which had issued an open call for project proposals to be carried out on board the ION SCV004 satellite, launched in January 2022. During the autumn of 2022, the team uplinked the code for the program to the satellite already in orbit.

The researchers trained a simple model to detect changes in cloud cover from aerial images directly onboard the satellite, in contrast to training on the ground. The model was based on an approach called few-shot learning, which enables a model to learn the most important features to look for when it has only a few samples to train from. A key advantage is that the data can be compressed into smaller representations, making the model faster and more efficient.

Vít Růžička explained: ‘The model we developed, called RaVAEn, first compresses the large image files into vectors of 128 numbers. During the training phase, the model learns to keep only the informative values in this vector; the ones that relate to the change it is trying to detect (in this case, whether there is a cloud present or not). This results in extremely fast training due to having only a very small classification model to train.’

Whilst the first part of the model, to compress the newly-seen images, was trained on the ground, the second part (which decided whether the image contained clouds or not) was trained directly on the satellite.

Normally, developing a machine learning model would require several rounds of training, using the power of a cluster of linked computers. In contrast, the team’s tiny model completed the training phase (using over 1300 images) in around one and a half seconds.

When the team tested the model’s performance on novel data, it automatically detected whether a cloud was present or not in around a tenth of a second. This involved encoding and analysing a scene equivalent to an area of about 4.8×4.8 km² area (equivalent to almost 450 football pitches).

According to the researchers, the model could easily be adapted to carry out different tasks, and to use other forms of data. Vít Růžička added: ‘Having achieved this demonstration, we now intend to develop more advanced models that can automatically differentiate between changes of interest (for instance flooding, fires, and deforestation) and natural changes (such as natural changes in leaf colour across the seasons). Another aim is to develop models for more complex data, including images from hyperspectral satellites. This could allow, for instance, the detection of methane leaks, and would have key implications for combatting climate change.’

Performing machine learning in outer space could also help overcome the problem of on-board satellite sensors being affected by the harsh environmental conditions, so that they require regular calibration. Vít Růžička said: ‘Our proposed system could be used in constellations of non-homogeneous satellites, where reliable information from one satellite can be applied to train the rest of the constellation. This could be used, for instance, to recalibrate sensors that have degraded over time or experienced rapid changes in the environment.’

Professor Andrew Markham, who supervised Vít’s DPhil research, said ‘Machine learning has a huge potential for improving remote sensing — the ability to push as much intelligence as possible into satellites will make space-based sensing increasingly autonomous. This would help to overcome the issues with the inherent delays between acquisition and action by allowing the satellite to learn from data on board. Vít’s work serves as an interesting proof-of-principle.’

However, in recent years scientists have created microbe-semiconductor biohybrids that merge the biosynthetic power of living systems with the ability of semiconductors to harvest light. These microorganisms use solar energy to convert carbon dioxide into value-added chemical products, such as bioplastics and biofuels. But how that energy transport occurs in such a tiny, complex system, and whether the process can be improved, is still unclear.

Cornell University researchers have developed a multimodal platform to image these biohybrids with single-cell resolution, to better understand how they function and how they can be optimized for more efficient energy conversion.

The team’s paper, “Single-Cell Multimodal Imaging Uncovers Energy Conversion Pathways in Biohybrids,” published July 27 in Nature Chemistry. The co-lead authors are postdoctoral researcher Bing Fu and former postdoctoral researcher Xianwen Mao.

The project was led by Peng Chen, professor of chemistry in the College of Arts and Sciences. The effort is an offshoot of a larger collaboration — with Tobias Hanrath, professor at the Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering in Cornell Engineering, and Buz Barstow, assistant professor of biological and environmental engineering in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences — that was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to explore microscopic imaging of microbes as a way to advance bioenergy research.

Biohybrid research has typically been conducted with bacteria in bulk — essentially a large amount of cells in a bucket, Peng said — emphasizing the overall yield of the value-added chemicals and the collective behaviors of the cells, rather than the underlying mechanism that enables the complex chemical transformation.

“Biology is very heterogeneous. The individual cells are very different. Now, in order to interrogate it better, you really need to measure it at a single-cell level,” Chen said. “This is where we come in. We provide quantitative assessments of protein behaviors and also a mechanistic understanding of how the electron transport occurs from the semiconductor to the bacteria cell.”

The new platform combined multi-channel fluorescence imaging with photoelectrochemical current mapping to survey the bacterium Ralstonia eutropha. The platform was able to simultaneously image, track and quantitate multiple proteins in the cell while also measuring the flow of electrons, ultimately correlating the cellular protein properties and electron transport processes.

The researchers successfully differentiated the functional roles of two types of hydrogenases — one bound to the cell’s membrane, and a soluble one in the cytoplasm — that help metabolize hydrogen and drive CO2 fixation. While the soluble hydrogenase is known to be critical for metabolizing hydrogen, the researchers found that the membrane-bound hydrogenase, while less important, actually facilitates the process and makes it more efficient.

In addition, the researchers obtained the first experimental evidence that the bacteriacan uptake a large amount of electrons from semiconductor photocatalysts. The team measured the electron current and found it be three orders of magnitude larger than what scientists previously thought, which suggests that future bacteria strains could be engineered to improve the efficiency of energy conversion.

The researchers also discovered that membrane-bound and soluble hydrogenases play an important role in mediating the electron transport from the semiconductor into the cell. Meanwhile, not only can the cell accept electrons; it can also spit them out in the opposite direction, without the assistance of hydrogenases.

The imaging platform is generalizable enough that it can be used to study other biological-inorganic systems, including yeast, and for other processes, such as nitrogen fixation and pollutant removal.

“Our multimodal imaging platform is powerful, but it of course has its own limits,” Chen said. “We can image and study proteins, but our approach does not allow us to analyze small molecule compositions. And so one can think about further integrating our approach with other techniques — for example, nanoscale mass spectrometry — so it would be really powerful. We’re not there yet.”

The research was supported by the DOE’s Biomolecular Characterization and Imaging Science program.

The researchers made use of the Cornell Center for Materials Research Shared Facilities, which is supported through the National Science Foundation’s MRSEC program.

A group of researchers with the Institute for Quantum Sciences and Engineering at Texas A&M University and the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TEES) have developed a new technique that allows low-concentration and low-dose screenings of protein-to-ligand interactions in physiologically relevant conditions. Titled thermostable-Raman-interaction-profiling (TRIP), this new approach is a paradigm-shifting answer to a long-standing problem that provides label-free, highly reproducible Raman spectroscopy measurements.

“Protein is a very fragile biological molecule and needs specific care,” said lead author and postdoctoral research assistant Dr. Narangerel Altangerel. “When I cool down the surface or substrate, I can make the proteins happy. I can poke them with the laser, and they can now output the information I need.”

While the proteins studied are on a molecular level, the implications of these findings could be huge. Like a lock and key, a protein-ligand interaction is the first step in processes like signal transduction, immune responses and gene regulation. Due to TRIP’s ability to detect protein-ligand interactions in real time, the timeline for drug and vaccine testing may be shortened. Another application could be clinical, turning lengthy tests to detect a virus into same-day turnaround with accurate results.

“The whole idea from the spectroscopy statute is that it requires minimum to none for sample preparation, so this can be moved into the clinic right away,” said co-author and University Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering Dr. Vladislav Yakovlev. “Clinicians and patients don’t have to wait for days and weeks of analysis. You can get all these answers almost right away.”

An additional benefit of the TRIP technique is that the sample size required to run the test is much smaller and requires a lower protein concentration, meaning a more cost-effective process for testing.

“I was buying 100 microliters of a sample for $3,500, then I have to share this sample with multiple people and end up with only a 20 to 30 microliter sample,” Altangerel said. “This forced me to use a smaller sample making Raman hard to do, as low-concentration samples make it a weak process. That made me challenge myself to try different things.”

Despite the breakthrough, the team is looking for other aspects in which the TRIP method could be useful.

“In a follow-up article, we are trying to identify the chemical composition of those proteins just using this technique so we can apply this to similar ideas related to DNA analysis and other biological molecules,” Yakovlev said. “Something that normally requires sequencing but utilizes TRIP, so you don’t need any sample preparation.”

The researchers published their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The project is supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), the Office of Naval Research, the Robert A. Welch Foundation, TEES, the National Institutes of Health and the Texas A&M University X Grants Program.

The supporting team comprises faculty and students affiliated with the Institute for Quantum Sciences and Engineering. Additional authors credited are Dr. Benjamin Neuman in the Department of Biology, Dr. Philip Hemmer in the Department of Electric and Computer Engineering, Navid Rajil, Dr. Zhenhuan Yi, Dr. Alexei Sokolov and principal investigator Dr. Marlan Scully in the Institute for Quantum Sciences and Engineering. Dr. Sofi Bin-Salamon served as the program officer for the AFOSR.

“For a long time. people thought this is impossible to do,” Dr. Yakovlev said. “But Dr. Altangerel demonstrated that nothing, indeed, is impossible if you do things right.”

“These beans are preserved among Mayan communities and grown by indigenous farmers. They are heirlooms from past generations and are important because of their cultural significance and contribution to biodiversity,” explained study co-author Elvira de Mejia, professor in the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition (FSHN), part of the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES) at U. of I.

The research team selected two varieties among several collected in the Chiapas region because of their high phenolic content, present in the seed coat pigment that gives the beans their dark red or black coloring.

“These phenolic compounds have the capability of keeping oxidation and inflammation under control, which could help decrease the risk of chronic health issues such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, and diabetes,” de Mejia said.

First, the researchers removed the bean seed coat and ground it for processing. Then they analyzed the chemical composition of a crude extract, as well as an enriched extract that was purified to concentrate the phenolic content. They also measured the bean extracts’ antioxidant capacity and ability to inhibit free radicals through biochemical assays and in silico molecular docking, a type of computer simulation.

“We found the black beans had high quantities of anthocyanin, in particular delphinidin, petunidin, and malvidin glucosides, which have antioxidative properties. The pinto beans had the highest total content of phenolic compounds and showed great potential for inhibiting enzymes that contribute to inflammation,” said David Fonseca Hernández, a doctoral student at CIATEJ, and lead author of the paper. Fonseca conducted the research as a visiting scholar in FSHN at U. of I.

The seed coat extracts can be used as additives in the food industry or in cosmetics, Fonseca explained.

“My research focuses on skin health, because there is a lot of interest in new ingredients with bioactive properties to use in formulations for creams. One of the main issues with aging skin is the oxidative stress that results from environmental factors. When the skin is exposed to air pollution and sunlight, it produces higher quantities of free radicals and inflammation pathways are activated,” he stated.

“We tested some markers related to inflammation, such as cyclooxygenase and inducible nitric oxide synthase. We had really good results showing the extracts, especially from pinto beans, could inhibit and reduce the activity of these enzymes.”

The researchers also found that the process of enriching the extracts can further concentrate the anthocyanins and phenolic compounds, which is useful both for industry and research purposes.

The study is part of a large project supported by CONAHCYT, Mexico’s National Science Foundation, explained study co-author Luis Mojica, research professor at CIATEJ and Fonseca’s advisor.

“One of the project’s goals was to find cultivars with an interesting profile to be used as a source of phytochemicals for the cosmetic industry. This industry is growing very fast, and there is a demand for natural products to treat skin-related diseases or aging,” he said. “In our research, we compared around 60 cultivars of common beans from the south of Mexico, and these two varieties are three or four times higher than others in phenolic compounds and anthocyanins. These beans are very interesting for health; they are also high in other nutrients such as proteins, fiber, and oligosaccharides.”

The project can help provide regional support by increasing wellness and developing Mexico’s southern region by preserving these unique bean varieties, the researchers stated.

Following up on the study’s significant laboratory findings, the next steps will be to test the extracts on cell tissue cultures and eventually in clinical trials.

Fonseca attended the U. of I. through I-MMAS, a program created to increase recruitment of Mexican and Mexican-American students within the University of Illinois System.

“Our collaboration with Dr. Mojica’s research group through I-MMAS is meaningful because there is a large number of migrants from Guadalajara in Illinois, but also because of the quality of their work. Dr. Mojica’s lab conducts basic research, but they also work with industry to apply the knowledge to solve practical problems. Dr. Mojica completed his doctorate degree in FSHN at U. of I. Both he and David were very productive and successful students during their time here, and we are very happy to continue our work with them,” de Mejia concluded.

The paper, “Black and pinto beans (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) unique mexican varieties exhibit antioxidant and anti-inflammatory potential,” is published in Food Research International [DOI: 10.1016/j.foodres.2023.112816]. Authors are David Fonseca Hernández, Luis Mojica, Mark A. Berhow, Korey Brownstein, Eugenia Lugo Cervantes, and Elvira Gonzalez de Mejia.

Funding for this research was provided by the Consejo Nacional de Humanidades Ciencias y Tecnologías CONAHCYT-Mexico, number 901000 and FORDECYT grant number 292474, and by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service.

In hopes of improving the overall survival rate for breast cancer patients, MIT researchers have designed a wearable ultrasound device that could allow people to detect tumors when they are still in early stages. In particular, it could be valuable for patients at high risk of developing breast cancer in between routine mammograms.

The device is a flexible patch that can be attached to a bra, allowing the wearer to move an ultrasound tracker along the patch and image the breast tissue from different angles. In the new study, the researchers showed that they could obtain ultrasound images with resolution comparable to that of the ultrasound probes used in medical imaging centers.

“We changed the form factor of the ultrasound technology so that it can be used in your home. It’s portable and easy to use, and provides real-time, user-friendly monitoring of breast tissue,” says Canan Dagdeviren, an associate professor in MIT’s Media Lab and the senior author of the study.

MIT graduate student Wenya Du, Research Scientist Lin Zhang, Emma Suh ’23, and Dabin Lin, a professor at Xi’an Technological University, are the lead authors of the paper, which appears today in Science Advances.

A wearable diagnostic

For this project, Dagdeviren drew inspiration from her late aunt, Fatma Caliskanoglu, who was diagnosed with late-stage breast cancer at age 49, despite having regular cancer screens, and passed away six months later. At her aunt’s bedside, Dagdeviren, then a postdoc at MIT, drew up a rough schematic of a diagnostic device that could be incorporated into a bra and would allow for more frequent screening of women at high risk for breast cancer.

Breast tumors that develop in between regularly scheduled mammograms — known as interval cancers — account for 20 to 30 percent of all breast cancer cases, and these tumors tend to be more aggressive than those found during routine scans.

“My goal is to target the people who are most likely to develop interval cancer,” says Dagdeviren, whose research group specializes in developing wearable electronic devices that conform to the body. “With more frequent screening, our goal to increase the survival rate to up to 98 percent.”

To make her vision of a diagnostic bra a reality, Dagdeviren designed a miniaturized ultrasound scanner that could allow the user to perform imaging at any time. This scanner is based on the same kind of ultrasound technology used in medical imaging centers, but incorporates a novel piezoelectric material that allowed the researchers to miniaturize the ultrasound scanner.

To make the device wearable, the researchers designed a flexible, 3D-printed patch, which has honeycomb-like openings. Using magnets, this patch can be attached to a bra that has openings that allow the ultrasound scanner to contact the skin. The ultrasound scanner fits inside a small tracker that can be moved to six different positions, allowing the entire breast to be imaged. The scanner can also be rotated to take images from different angles, and does not require any special expertise to operate.

“This technology provides a fundamental capability in the detection and early diagnosis of breast cancer, which is key to a positive outcome,” says Anantha Chandrakasan, dean of MIT’s School of Engineering, the Vannevar Bush Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and one of the authors of the study. “This work will significantly advance ultrasound research and medical device designs, leveraging advances in materials, low-power circuits, AI algorithms, and biomedical systems.”

Early detection

Working with the MIT Center for Clinical and Translational Research, the researchers tested their device on one human subject, a 71-year-old woman with a history of breast cysts. Using the new device, the researchers were able to detect the cysts, which were as small as 0.3 centimeters in diameter — the size of early-stage tumors. They also showed that the device achieved resolution comparable to that of traditional ultrasound, and tissue can be imaged at a depth up to 8 centimeters.

“Access to quality and affordable health care is essential for early detection and diagnosis. As a nurse I have witnessed the negative outcomes of a delayed diagnosis. This technology holds the promise of breaking down the many barriers for early breast cancer detection by providing a more reliable, comfortable, and less intimidating diagnostic,” says Catherine Ricciardi, nurse director at MIT’s Center for Clinical and Translational Research and an author of the study.

To see the ultrasound images, the researchers currently have to connect their scanner to the same kind of ultrasound machine used in imaging centers. However, they are now working on a miniaturized version of the imaging system that would be about the size of a smartphone.

The wearable ultrasound patch can be used over and over, and the researchers envision that it could be used at home by people who are at high risk for breast cancer and could benefit from frequent screening. It could also help diagnose cancer in people who don’t have regular access to screening.

“Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women, and it is treatable when detected early,” says Tolga Ozmen, a breast cancer surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital who is also an author of the study. “One of the main obstacles in imaging and early detection is the commute that the women have to make to an imaging center. This conformable ultrasound patch is a highly promising technology as it eliminates the need for women to travel to an imaging center.”

The researchers hope to develop a workflow so that once data are gathered from a subject, artificial intelligence can be used to analyze how the images change over time, which could offer more accurate diagnostics than relying on the assessment of a radiologist comparing images taken years apart. They also plan to explore adapting the ultrasound technology to scan other parts of the body.

The research was funded, in part, by the National Science Foundation, a 3M Non-Tenured Faculty Award, the Sagol Weizmann-MIT Bridge Program, and MIT Media Lab Consortium Funding